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Wednesday, 18 December 2013

SDB: Actors

For our film opening there is five main characters; a girl running in the opening scene (film within a film), the murderer also for the opening scene, the scream queen for the actual film, the scream queen's boyfriend, and the masked killer.

The outfit used for the second scream queen

Firstly for the girl running in the opening we needed a blonde scream queen, who was willing to wear figure-hugging clothing, heavy makeup and would run through a field. We actually chose Poppy Potts to do this, the producer of our film opening, as she fits the scream queen representation and was willing to act. Poppy also knew of a good location to film this opening scene so this was very helpful. For the murderer who chases her, we needed a fairly tall, lanky actor (preferably a boy) to represent an initimidating character, even when masked. Poppy decided to use her brother for this, as he fit the representation and was accessible easily, and is also knowledgable with filming, so was able to help film the footage aswell.

For the actual film, we needed a blonde scream queen who was also willing to wear heavy makeup, revealing clothing - and also needed to be confident with acting skills, as this role includes a lot of speech. Poppy and I wrote down a list of possible girls to fit this role, we had a choice from about 5 people. We then asked the first girl on the list, Kathy Allen, and fortunately she was willing to participate. We tried out a practice shoot with Kathy and her acting was a success. Poppy and I both agreed we would not need to ask any of the other girls.

We used the same technique when choosing the actor to play the scream queen's boyfriend, and fortunately again, the first boy we asked was willing to take part, Alex Osborne. For this character there wasn't too many specifics required for representation as the actor is not shown up close, but only on CCTV. We just made sure Alex was wearing suitable 'teenage' clothing, such as a t-shirt, jeans and trainers. This was easily acssesible as Alex himself owned many of these clothes.